Progress in Arrhythmia and Sudden Cardiac Death Research Support

Abstract

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was a season of darkness, it was a season of light...”. This schismatic opening of Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, published the same year Einthoven was born, provides perspective on the sometimes extraordinary consequences of social and political change on a range of activities spanning from law to the pursuit of science in medicine. Although Dickens had in mind contrasts between what was occurring in England and in France in the eighteenth century, his depiction of the ways progress is affected in “times of plenty” versus “times of hardship” is also one that helps in understanding how biomedical research has changed over recent decades. Dickens’s view of events in his time are also instructive in understanding the impact of the various “evolutionary” and “revolutionary” changes that have occurred in how research is financed and managed, and how changes in the public’s perception and willingness to participate in this process have such an enormous impact on its success. In the relatively brief period since Dickens’s Tale was published, we have evolved from a system of relatively modest public funding of individual investigators in local or regional academic and university laboratories, to today’s more richly endowed, broad-based programs that may embrace many different aspects of a problem simultaneously in both academic and large corporate research centers.

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The views expressed in this discussion summary represent the personal opinions of the author and do not in any way reflect those of the National Institutes of Health or National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, nor do these organizations necessarily agree or disagree with positions expressed. Data cited in this article are taken exclusively from those available in the public domain